My mind is constantly running…this is my way of organizing my thoughts!

A Parenting Milestone…and not a good one

Things sure are different now than they were when we were growing up. Seems kids start getting cell phones in the 4th grade, if not earlier.

Trevor has always wanted one and finally at the end of 5th grade we decided to add a line and call it our “spare phone” and whenever Trevor left the house to meet up with friends in a different neighborhood, we’d have him take the phone so he could call us in the event he needed help with something, or if we needed to get in touch with him. It was really quite convenient!

This was April 2010. No text plan and only a couple kids knew his number.

Fast forward several months….it’s the Fall Soccer season and all the kids on his team have their own cell phone numbers so they all start swapping information and he starts to receive text messages on the phone. We don’t have a text plan.

He’s embarassed to tell his friends that he can’t text, so we start discussing it (Jim and I) and decide maybe it’s time to let him have a text plan.

We don’t want to stunt Trevor’s social growth.

Huh?

Well, it’s not like it used to be where you would ride your bike over to a friend’s house, or pick up the phone and call them to see if they wanted to play basketball at the school. Kids that have text plans TEXT instead of call, and they tend to text the friends that have text…and not take the time to CALL the friends who don’t have text….and well, we didn’t want Trevor to be left out because he couldn’t text.

His soccer buddies would send out “can’t wait for the game tomorrow” messages getting themselves all pumped up. And Trevor felt left out. And friends from school with “Hey, going to the playground for bball, wanna come?” Although his current group of friends doesn’t have cell phones and text so we’re back to phone calling for that one. But there are girls from school who text “Hi! Whatcha doin?” messages.

I’m all for him communicating with friends (and girls even).

We decide to add the $5/mo text plan which allows 250 messages per month. I explain that the equivalent is he can send out 4 messages each day and receive 4 back. No problem!

We continue for months without issue.

Two months ago he starts texting more frequently. The bill comes and he’s sent/received about 180 each month.

He picks up the pace a little more and starts sending 20-30 messages OVER his limit, which isn’t bad….it’s a $2.00-$3.00 fee. He pays me each month for his overages and we move along.

He picks up the pace a little lot more.

Our most recent bill: $82.00 OVER what it should be. He sent over 1,080 text messages last month!

That is the parenting milestone. When your kid reaches their text limit so often that you need to sign up for the UNLIMITED Texting plan.

This is to accomodate for all the messages that say stuff like:
K
Later
:)
:(
Oh
Whaaa?????
LOL
TTYL
Whatev

And a bunch of other one-word-not-real-conversation responses.

So there we are. Now all three of us (Jim, me and Trevor) all have unlimited texting so text away!!